


look right through you ('cause you're a ghost)

by maraudersourwolf



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Attempt at Humor, Fluff and Humor, Haunted Houses, Haunting, Idiots in Love, Liam is a Little Shit, M/M, OTLHalloweenfest18, The Author Regrets Everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-13 23:58:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16482206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maraudersourwolf/pseuds/maraudersourwolf
Summary: There’s a bunch of stuff they forget to tell you when you get to be a ghost.Like all of it.But also the part where you have to share your haunted place with another undead.





	look right through you ('cause you're a ghost)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wolfenboy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfenboy/gifts), [parttimehuman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/parttimehuman/gifts).



> **HALLOWEEN THIAM | TRICK OR TREAT**  
>  
> 
> P R O M P T  
>  _The new tenants of the house I’m haunting are being haunted by another ghost. War ensues._
> 
>  
> 
> I have to be honest, the "war ensues" was kind of an after thought.  
> Same as the whole fic.  
> The one that was supposed to be 2k max and ended up being the double because  
>  _Self-control, what is that?_
> 
> I'm really sorry to whomever gave me this prompt, I tried my best.  
> It clearly didn't work.
> 
>  
> 
> Barely to none beta'd.  
> Super messy.  
> I'm out of puns so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> Enjoy & Happy Halloween!

 

 

What they clearly forget to tell you when you finally let the knowledge sink that yes, you did die like you so many times asked the heavens for, and yes, you still have to stay into this goddamn hell because your luck is not just rotten, it developed a taste for your misery and is now zombying your ass, is basically everything.

Even more regarding haunting house etiquette.

Don't get him wrong, Liam has been dead for a total of who know how fucking long, time doesn't work the same for him now, but he has seen horror movies when he was alive. Enough to have the basics of what a ghost is and how does it work and that there's a distinction between him, a poltergeist and a demon.

But he was almost completely 100% without a doubt sure that only one (1) entity did the haunting.

And there's actually another ghost here.

He doesn't want to get in contact with any customer service for ghost, mostly because he's not sure if he should use an ouija board for that or now that he's a ghost too, just wish really hard for someone to pop in existence. Besides the fact that he doesn't want to be the annoying just turned ghost throwing a tantrum.

This is a mistake that needs to get fixed soon.

Even if it’s by his own hands.

 

*

 

"Hi, yes, excuse me, I’m Liam and this is my house to haunt so if you could--"

"Fuck off"

Liam gets taken aback because one thing his dad always told his was that it was easier to get flies with honey than with vinegar. Now, he never exactly knew why someone would like to get flies, since those are little quick pests that bear their children in your food and then rubs their tiny little hands mischievously enjoying that you are never going to figure out which piece of bread is the one tainted with the aftermath of walking in a trashcan. Or why someone would want to lose precious and valuable time of their life trying different methods to attract insects when the thing you’re supposed to do is squish them. 

That’s exactly what his mom would do.

And what he’s going to do right now with the Anti-Casper here.

"Listen you little shit, you're not going to haunt this house because this is  _ MY _ house to be haunted and unless you want troubles--"

He only notices his mistake when Paper Thin Attitude stops midway from floating through a door and turns around to see him. 

Liam is utterly unprepared for this. 

Horror movies in the story of never talked about how ghost smackdowns work.

"What?,” seethes the one that will be his Not Best Friend for eternity. “What are you gonna do? Kill me? I'm already dead, so you're a bit late for that"

Oh so it’s not only a stealer of houses to be haunted, but also he got stuck in the emo phase forever.

Exquisite.

Nothing like his utter bad luck to settle his partner for the ends of eternity.

 

*

 

Liam isn’t sure what he’s most bitter about.

The living family inside the house that has no idea of what’s happening and cannot, in fact, vote the other ghost out of the house as it should be.

Or the rejected extra for the ghostbusters that’s been floating around the house ignoring him.

But he’ll settle for both.

 

*

 

Definitely getting ignored.

 

*

 

No, he takes it back.

It’s the family.

 

*

 

How can a family of four with two very vocal twin kids not be able to notice his attempts at haunting them?

Okay, yes, he’s new, he knows that. He might have missed the old days of Beetlejuice school for Renegade Ghosts, but hey. He’s making an effort. It’s not easy to move plates or glasses or pop in and out of existence.

It requires time.

And energy.

And will.

Liam has never had a will to do anything in his life, except for doing the opposite of what he was told, and that may be the whole reason why he’s dead in the first place.

Or because he fell down a hole while walking alone in the middle of the woods at night.

Who knows.

The thing is that he tries.

He tried the sheet over the head thing. He tried the closet thing. The writing in the foggy glass thing AND the handprint one. The shadow behind the curtains thing. Well, basically everything in the repertoire of being a Proper Ghost™. 

Which clearly is a fluke because what did he got? Nothing

Not a scream.

Not even a concerned gasp.

Plain nothing.

It’s as if he was invisible or something.

He’s starting to think that horror movies aren’t so realistic after all.

 

*

 

The little kids somehow adopt him and now he’s their ghost best friend even if Liam time after time repeated that he was there to make their lives a living hell and not be a cool story for show and tell at school.

So now not only he isn’t getting noticed at all. 

He’s also the non-real invisible friend.

The lack of respect of the youth this days is reaching unbelievable levels.

 

*

 

“That’s not how you haunt a house”

“Oh really?” It’s obviously sarcasm, but the other ghost seems ready to open the mouth and reply. He gets it, he skipped sarcasm school as well, Mason told him many times that he used the wrong tone of voice, but who would thought that he was asking for real?  “I’ve watched all the ghost movies in existence, even the romantic ones. And the stories. There was this one with this dude having an apartment and falling in love with the ghost in it and there was very graphic and descriptive things like how to have sex with a ghost so you can’t teach me anything. I know it all. I have the knowledge--”

“Five”

“Five? Five what? Five knowledges? You can’t have five knowledges, you stole my house so you get to have zero knowledge in  _ basic manners _ and--”

“Five families I’ve kicked out of here.”

There is pride in that deep voice and Liam can’t understand how someone can be proud of being so mean and letting five families homeless when he could have the pleasure of making their toasts stuck and flush the toilet while they shower every day. 

“That,” the ghost hand does a thing in the air to Liam’s general direction and Liam swats it back because not only this guy has the nerve to steal his haunted house, but he also invades his personal haunted space. “Not how you haunt”

“What is  _ that _ ?,” Liam asks and looks around because if there’s something that got stuck on him, like a piece of anti-haunting paper or some magic spit covered gum against hunting, he wants it gone now.

“Your whole face.”

In retrospective, the answer was very clear.

But Liam is pretty pleased to know that his aiming is still perfect.

And that punching another ghost is a thing.

 

*

 

Of course the one time he does get noticed is when he tries to stop Casper the Jerk from taking his job.

 

*

 

“I told you you can’t haunt here, this is my house!”

“And you seem under the impression I care of what you think I should or not do”

“Well, yeah, because this is my house--”

“Good luck next time”

There’s a floating glass, flying straight to his head if he had more meat and bones than whatever is is that ghost are made of besides ectoplasm, ready to smash on the wall and Liam stops it halfway without any trouble, completely missing the point of finally being able to manipulate something concrete, and settling it on the table again. Because this dude seems to be under the impression that a flying glass is going to deter Liam from punch the undead lights out of him. Which is not what’s happening.

Who cares if someone finally saw his pretty impressive set of skills to stop other ghosts’ skills that he didn’t even know he had in the first place?

By the bloody murder scream, the family’s mom.

 

*

 

Liam knew that he didn’t kill the twins for a reason.

At least now everyone in the family knows that the real asshole is the other ghost and that they need to kick him out so Liam can properly haunt them how it should be.

 

*

 

It doesn’t work.

 

*

 

Liam isn’t really sure what the real purpose of sage is. If it’s supposed to make him disappear, give him a rash, a really bad case of sneezes or what. 

You are just burning conspicuous smelling grass for a fake sense of security because the erasing bad vibes from a environment is nothing but bullshit. Liam can still see the other ghost going through one wall to the other and y’know what?

That is fake marketing right here.

Like getting his own house to haunt without pesky intruder.

It’s easy to see the pattern going now.

 

*

 

"I thought you wanted to haunt the house”

Liam doesn’t need to turn around to know who’s disrespecting him with that nonsense so early in the whichever fuck of the time is it for them now. 

"I am”

He is.

He has changed every furniture in the room one cm to the left and one back. His next step is putting saran paper on the toilet and over the door entrance for maximum annoying purposes.

"No, you are doing frat tricks”

Liam resents that statement with burning passion because yes, he might have taken the idea from a frat but that doesn't mean they own the rights of them. 

"You are not supposed to do pranks when you haunt a house”

"I know,” Liam replies aimlessly, fixing the last details after moving the coffee table.

He doesn't really.

Most of the movies he saw either end up sacrificing the whole family to Satan or doing cool fx stuff that made Liam laugh because how can you get scared from cabinets popping open and closed? 

"You sure?”

"Yes”

"Well, then you suck at it”

Liam finds kind of amazing how flawlessly his fist locks into the other ghost's face.

As if it was meant to be all around.

 

*

 

His own haunting isn’t working but there’s no way in his afterlife that he’ll agree to be utterly bad at it.

A change of tactics it is then.

 

*

 

Having the twins rummaging every corner of the house in search of new and exotic tablecloths and bedsheets for him to dress up might not be the perfect idea.

But he has a plan.

 

*

 

“This is getting ridiculous”

It would be nice to say that after being pretty dead and end up being a ghost, getting scared due to a sudden voice out of nowhere was a thing of the past. But he hadn’t experienced it yet, so.

“You’re ridiculous”

“Nice comeback, puppy”

Liam turns around and tries to flip the bird at the same time, because he might be a ghost puppy but that gives the other guy no right to call him that since he’s not a certificated ghost as he is but rather a haunted house stealer. He might have forgotten to considerate that his not physical body is harder to control at great speeds, if you can count turning around as that, or the floral tablecloth he’s using is way longer than expected, because he ends up throwing a couple of plates to the floor.

“Oh shit”

“Well, that went better than expected,” comes laced in amusement but when Liam look back up from the tiny chaos of pieces of ceramic between the cutted up circles of patterned fabric, the jerk is once again fusing with the wallpaper like the creep he is instead of staying there to help fix the disaster he created. 

Liam decides that’s enough to make the other ghost his nemesis for what’s left of eternity.

And that this is war.

 

*

 

Planning a war turns out to be harder and more boring than anticipated.

So the best next thing to do is send his secret weapon to haunt the haunter.

 

*

 

“Stop those pests from following me around”

"I don’t know what you’re talking about”

It’s a lie and he’s a shit at lying. He’s been all his life and seems to be a trait that he kept for later too, but there’s no way he’ll confirm that yes, he was the one sending the little nightmares to follow the jerk around and keep him on his ectoplasmic toes.

“Are you stalking me?”

A distraction though, he’s good at that. Even if it consist of betray the list of sentences that he expected would come out of his mouth, in and after life, but clearly this one saw the opportunity on his still pretty ongoing shock and desperation.

"Yes, I've been stalking you around the house, because I have nothing better to do,” grumbles the other guy.

And here’s a thing that no one ever teach you about sarcasm. 

Does it count as such when the other person is clearly saying the truth but trying and failing miserably at trying to make it pass as a lie? 

The other ghost huffs, hiding his face in between his hands for a couple of seconds and Liam knows exactly what’s happening now. It’s the  _ I asks the cosmos to give me strength  _ thing, the same thing Mason did many times in the past, and first of all, how rude of him. He’s nothing but a blessing. 

And second of all, well.

Liam doesn’t have nothing else to add, but his offense level is worth two reasons instead of one.

“No, I haven’t been stalking you,” the ghosts groans, dragging his hands down his face and looking at Liam straight in the eye. “Did you finally get afterlife dementia?”

Can ghosts get that sickness? Is that a thing? Who knows. Liam’s knowledge about the afterlife turned up to be very scarce, doesn’t matter how many times he watched Tim Burton’s movies or how many hours did he burn reading trashy fanfics.

“No, I-- what do you do with your extra time?”

Maybe he is getting afterlife dementia after all, whatever that means.

Turns out that being a ghost isn’t really that fun and besides hunting down every possible piece of fabric to make himself a traditional ghost costume, there’s nothing else to do.

His plans of war turned out to be a fiasco and messing with the twins are fun to a certain extent. Liam has decided that his limit is three excited squeals, one tantrum and the daily very inconsiderate attempt of going through him. He still has to communicate that to the little monsters in a successful way for a three year old to catch.

“We are ghosts,” says the other guy, as a matter of fact. “We do nothing”

“Except haunting the house”

“And haunting my whole afterlife experience, too,” there’s a sneer paired up with that sentence that Liam will take as a flawless win in this war. “Keep the goblins away from me”

“Stop haunting my house”

In a blink of an eye, the other guy isn’t there anymore and Liam has only a second to mull the fact that maybe he didn’t listen to his threat. 

Maybe. 

Who cares.

He’s sure the creeper is still in the walls and that the point gets across.

 

*

 

Time is relative, said an old physics book he read once for school so fuck long ago.

They missed the part where it gets stupid.

 

*

 

“How long have we been ghosts?”

“ _ We _ sounds like a group,” says the jerk, arching a brow at him, while still floating through the hallways of the house. “There’s no  _ we _ here”

“Okay, Mr. Lone Ranger--”

“Stop with the nicknames, my name is Theo.”

Liam doesn’t remember ever calling the guy a nickname out loud but then again, Liam has a terrible memory. Or maybe reading minds is a power you develop when you’re a ghost and he still haven’t gotten the opportunity to put it into practice. 

It’s a far stretch, he knows, but he also knows he’s a ghost now and everything can be fair game.

“ _ Theo _ ,” he expects the name to leave an awful aftertaste on his ghost mouth, but it has in fact the opposite effect. Who would have thought that calling him Ghost Ass in his mind was as annoying as Ghost Ass himself. “My name is Liam”

“I know”

Maybe the reading minds isn’t that far fetched as he thought.

“How?”

“Because I read minds,” replies Theo in a monotone voice before rolling his eyes. "Are you kidding me? You went all boy scout on me the first day you got here. Who even introduce themselves politely after finding out they're dead?”

“I thought you were robbing my house”

“How can I rob your house if I was here first?”

From the small bundle of things he thought was finally free after being a ghost, having a sudden existential crisis was one.

And of course he had to be wrong.

 

*

 

After much thinking, Liam decides that it doesn’t matter who came here first because he was the one who vocally called dibs first, so the house is no one’s but his.

 

*

 

“How long have you been a ghost?”

“Are you trying to drive me into ghost dementia?,” Theo barely looks at him before sighing and letting his shoulders sag. “I don’t know. Enough”

It’s not an answer but then again, Theo barely answers his questions most of the time. Always using excuses like  _ I’m not your afterlife guide _ or  _ I’m not a google hologram _ or even  _ Liam if you don’t leave me alone I’ll find the way to convince the twins you want to be sage’d 24/7 _ .

See, plain excuses.

“I’m sure you were lonely,” Liam replies with a smile, feeling smug about being successfully mean for once instead of trying to being mean and ending up in a very heart to heart situation.

“Maybe,” Theo replies and this time, when he turns to look at Liam, he keeps staring a bit too long, like the creep he is. Enough for Liam to notice that his eyes are so green and grey that there’s no way they’re even real. “Not anymore”

Maybe it was too soon to talk.

But the sudden warmth in his core is the closest thing to being alive again that he’s felt in a while and he can’t complain about that.

 

*

 

Liam’s been searching for Theo around the house for who even knows how long when he finally decides to look up at the ceiling, in a movement of sheer frustration, just to find the asshole floating mid air as if he was in a hammock chair. 

“Can we use ouija boards?”

He’s getting accustomed to Theo’s groans by now, this one being closer to the frustration Liam is feeling but not quite enough. 

“I don’t know, why? Want to finally scare some people?”

“Fuck you,” it’s almost an involuntary reflex to swear at Theo but it’s not Liam’s fault. He’s just easy to curse. “I have a craving”

Theo doesn’t even twitch from his place in the middle of the living room, chilling with the spiderwebs and the dust from years that’s been lingering in the deepest corners of the house, and it’s very obvious that he’s trying to play it cool when he just wants further explanation.

“I want a pizza”

“We can’t eat”

It’s short and brutal, enough to make Liam think that if he were alive, he’d fall dead because not being able to eat is death worthy.

“What?”

“We can’t eat, you don’t have a stomach”

Looking down proves that indeed, he doesn’t have a stomach. But it doesn’t explain why he owns a craving if there’s nothing to be filled up in the first place.

“What if I possess someone?”

Theo shrugs and it proves to be just disheartening. “Don’t know how”

He can’t eat, he can’t haunt a house, he has to share place with another ghost and now he can’t possess someone. He can’t do anything of the cool stuff that movies and stories said he could. Is like Hollywood decided to lie unashamedly to his face. All around, this experience with the afterlife is starting to turn out pretty discouraging.

“Is there any more bad news you need to give me?”

“Aside from dogs not liking you anymore---”

That’s it, afterlife is full of misery.

Where’s the jumbo bundle of sage sticks when you need it.

 

*

 

Liam starts to notice that the numbness of being a ghost turns into something normal and that even if he doesn’t forget about his old memories, the new ones are a lot better.

Specially when Theo’s in them.

 

*

 

Along the way, anti-haunting the house shifts from its original point of getting noticed to just kill some time from the eternal supply of it he has on his hands around the house.

And piss Theo off.

That’s a bonus he can’t ignore.

 

*

 

Along the way, they start to spent more time together as well.

 

*

 

"Liam, I swear on my dead ass that if you stop me again, I’ll--”

To be fair, Liam does stop him. 

Not because Theo just threatened him with doing who knows what, that is actually a very non enlightening on his part, but because since the beginning the goal was to piss him off.

Long are forgotten the days where Liam wanted a scream or a gasp of horror. No, no. Now the goal is to stop every flying vase or glass, closing every cabinet door being open and snitching the candy hide spots as payment for them to drive Theo nuts.

“You will what?”

Liam expects some yelling and some swearing side dishing it, with some threats in between as usual just to spice things up a little bit more because doesn’t matter how many times Theo says he’s going to kill him, there’s no way that’d actually happen unless he calls the Ghostbusters.

He definitely doesn’t expect the punching.

With Theo’s lips.

On his lips.

And enjoying it so much.

 

*

 

That’s a lie.

He was definitely expecting that.

 

*

 

“So---”

Liam’s lips feel tingly. 

His whole body does.

Somewhere along the line of the shock due to surprise and the sigh of relief, with the whole  _ kissing you hard enough to let you know I’m angry but also that I’ve wanted this for so long _ , he let himself completely go and now he’s sitting cross-legged in the middle of the air in the kitchen, slowly spinning like as if he was drifting away.

“So,” Theo repeats, close enough to his lips that Liam can feel the itchy sensation of personal space being invaded, pressing their foreheads together in a way that would be painful if they weren’t dead-alive. “You kissed me”

“You started it”

“Mhm,” Theo hums and leans over to kiss him again, but Liam ducks flawlessly, just for the sake of being a little shit and nothing else. Theo’s huff of disapproval is nothing but music to his ears.

“Didn’t know you were drooling ectoplasm all around for me”

Yes, Liam isn’t exactly good when it comes to flirting.

Or the after  _ I’m not really sure if we passionately kissed or tried to eat each other’s face off _ . 

To be honest, he’s not good in lots of stuff and afterlife is just highlighting those qualities of him, but there’s no real creature able to be as smooth as movies and stories show, right? It’s just another lie of big ol’ Hollywood and--

“Those floral tablecloth look actually stunning over you”

Except Theo, it seems.

Liam laughs from the absurdity of it mixed with the giddiness of _finally_ and he doesn’t remember how long it’s been since the last time he did so. His whole body feels alight, alive and full, and who even cares what is he good at or bad at or how long they have been ghost because Theo kissed him like he was the one and only thing that mattered and there’s more important things, like not being able to eat pizza ever again or dogs hating you, but that kiss erased everything and it was just them.

And Liam might be having a little bit of a struggle concentrating now.

“So--,” Liam resumes, trying to not giggle like a lovesick, and Theo hums again, his green eyes locked in Liam’s blue ones in that creepy way of his that Liam has guiltily started to like. Listen, if the guy’s going to be a creep, better sacrifice himself for the cause, right? “I know this is  _ my _ house to haunt---”

“Are you kidding me now--”

“ _ BUT _ how about being spooky ghosts together?”

There’s many things they don’t tell you when you die. Like the fact that movies are just pretty lies and that your house to haunt might have another ghost inside taking your job. How time seems to be endless and every day is a little bit more boring. 

Or that haunting a house is actually harder than it looks because no one gets scared, unless you set a flying glass on the countertop.

They don’t tell you anything, for that matter.

Not even the way Theo’s smile will light him up and make him warm inside, every corner of his body tingling with excitement and how the boring and lonely world they live in now will get a new color, a new shade, a new meaning.

“Forever,” Theo whispers before kissing him again.

But that’s a surprise he can get behind.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am not embarrassed to say that I did a bit of shameless self-promo.  
> The story that Liam read  
> [haunt my heart down, boo](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14438598)
> 
>  
> 
> Title from the song  
> [Spooky Ghosts by SNCKPCK](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG3OFC2vQyk)


End file.
